A Smug Feeling of Satisfaction

Well, I did it.

I've played around with this idea for quite a while. Even loaded portable blogging software on my Treo. (Which is way cool, by the way.) But it took my wife wanting me to set one up for her prayer pilgrimage to break my inertia. After all, I could never show my face around my tech friend again if my near-techno-phobic-wife had a blog and I didn't.

So at last, I have a forum. At last a place to vent my opinions. But instead of revelling in the machiavellian power of it all, I find myself with little to say at first. So perhaps some explanations would be in order.

First, the name. It's actually the title of my latest completed work of unpublished fiction. But aside from that, it's also a fairly good explanation of the way I feel most days.

We are born through water. We are composed of water. We live in a world of mostly water. We are baptized in water. Water is the ultimate sign of life. It is the image of God's grace. It is the symbol of everything clean and pure. But as for me, I find myself struggling to stay afloat most of the time.

Sometimes it's just overwhelming to be surrounded by so much that is "liquid." Because the other side of the analogy is that water is ever moving and uncontrollable. Grasping at water leaves you with empty hands that only hold the residue of what you were reaching to find. Water can be both wild and calm, but either way it can overwhelm you and take you to unknowable depths. And though you be the best of swimmers, in the ocean that is life you'll always tire before reaching the shore. So the only chance for survival is to surrender to the whims of the waves.

Thus my struggle with knowing God.

To put my life in the hands of what I cannot see and simply discover where I come ashore seems so foolhardy. I want the control of my life. I want to know the meaning behind every seemingly random circumstance. It's a big ocean, after all. Why risk myself to possible folly?

But then I consider the tired swimmer and my thoughts are moved in the other direction. What's the true folly? Living a life that leads to no reward, or struggling endlessly against a force that is unchangeable and eternal?

I could go on, dear reader, but there's plenty of time for you to get to know me. Besides, I have to leave you with some reasons for coming back, don't I?

So allow me to leave you tonight with this thought: God's we create for ourselves are pleasant things that always give us exactly the peace we were looking for. But I have become dissatisfied and disillusioned by them. And now I find that I need to discover the true God out there, who is wild and untamed and who loves as fiercely as he judges. This is the God I long to know. And I won't settle for anything less.